Use of mobile computing devices (hereafter “mobile nodes”) such as laptops, notebook computers, personal digital assistants (“PDAs”) and cellular telephones is becoming increasingly popular today. These mobile nodes enable users to move from one location to another (“roam”), while continuing to maintain their connectivity to the same network. Given its increasing popularity, it is unsurprising that most corporate (“enterprise”) networks today attempt to facilitate fast and secure mobile computing.
In order to roam freely, networks typically conform to one or more industry-wide mobile internet protocol (“IP”) standards. More specifically, the Internet Engineering Task Force (“IETF”) has promulgated roaming standards (Mobile IPv4, IETF RFC 3344, August 2002) and Mobile IPv6, IETF Mobile IPv6, Internet Draft draft-ietf-mobileip-ipv6-24.txt, June 2003) to enable mobile node users to move from one location to another while continuing to maintain their current connectivity to the same network, and/or to the networked devices (e.g., printers). These industry standards have unfortunately encountered various adoption and implementation problems. As a result, although these standards exist, there is still a need for one or more schemes to enable mobile nodes to roam easily.